Before the Bubbly goes Flat

I am no grave dancer, but as the holiday season approaches, I’ve made a small sport of watching the French Champagne portion of the international wine industry completely flounder under the weight of their ongoing missteps and hubris.

The folks from Comite Interprofessional du Vin de Champagne (CIVC), the trade association that groups all the grape growers and houses of the Champagne region in France,  are radically cutting their production this vintage so as to not undercut their existing luxury pricing with too much inventory, they are floundering to figure out marketing and whether Champagne is a wine for celebration or for food (they wish it was considered a food wine, when in fact they should be doubling down on the celebration aspect—small acts of celebration that occur daily and weekly) and they are continuing to reinforce their ridiculous trademark protection.

This all adds up to a continuing bloodbath in Champagne with total volume down 20% (almost 6 million cases) since 2006.  And, winners are coming from, well, just about everywhere else – domestic sparklers, Cava from Spain, various Italian sparklers, Cap Classique from South Africa and even Georgian sparklers from producer Bagrationi, newly imported to the U.S.

I say bring them all on – especially if it’s at a price that is more fitting for “every day celebration” and less “the promotion of my career.”

Most U.S. consumers think about sparkling wine in one of two categories – “it tastes good,” or “it doesn’t taste good,” and this continuing assault on the sanctity of Champagne only coming from the Champagne region of France (at luxury pricing) has reached its weary nadir, at least in my book.

Frankly, I would posit, as a consumer, that precious few wine consumers actually care where their sparkling wine comes from, mostly because nobody studies it as a thinking person’s drink – it’s an aid du jour for celebrations, big and small – not much more and frequently very less than even that. 

Because of this, it makes the vigilant French defense of Champagne as only coming from the Champagne region of France all the more head-scratching, you think they might see the handwriting on the wall, ease up off the dogmatism and focus on Champagne being the best and the original while inserting themselves into the “celebratory” drinking conversation with the rest of their brethren.

Consider this for a moment:  what if Google went after everybody who referenced they were going to “Google” something?  What if they demanded that in order to use the word “Google” it couldn’t be in the form of a “verb” it had to be used as a noun – “I am going to use the Google search engine to search for that bit of information” instead of “Google that.”  And, what if Google’s reason for doing so was they didn’t want their brand to become a generic catch-all for searching the Internet?

It would be mighty curious, right?  This day and age, one might ask the rightful question, “Why wouldn’t you want your company name to become the de facto standard reference point for searching the Internet?”

With the product launch of Google competitor Bing from Microsoft, the New York Times has an article that talks about the shift in thinking from legacy brand protection to the “verbing” of brand names, an article that the Champagne folks would do well to read.

As the article notes (excerpted):

“… the speed at which reputations are made and destroyed in the Internet age has changed the thinking about the danger of brand names’ becoming verbs. Better to get the market share when you can and worry later, when the brand becomes part of the popular vernacular and less distinctive in the process.

‘The risk of becoming generic is so low, and the benefits of being on the top of someone’s mind are so high,’ said Rebecca Tushnet, an expert on trademark law at Georgetown University.”

Why is this an important point to reinforce?  Because everybody calls it Champagne anyway – and they go out and buy Spanish Cava.

My frustration in this regard reached its peak last week when I received a press release from the US arm of the CIVC.  The release noted (excerpted):

This Halloween, don’t be “tricked” by misleading disguises pretending to be something they’re not. This includes wines at your local retailers and restaurants using the names of world class wine regions, like Champagne, even though the grapes used in the bottle do not come from those places. The tricks aren’t limited to Halloween: 50 percent of the U.S. sparkling wine market at any given moment is improperly masquerading as “Champagne.” 

On Halloween, leave the masks to the goblins, ghosts, and ghouls and make sure you’re not paying for sparkling wine disguised as Champagne. For more information about the name protection issue and to take a Champagne trivia quiz so you can know what is real and what is disguising itself as Champagne, visit http://www.Champagne.us

Now, to be fair, I’m not entirely laissez-faire on this “sense of place” protection.  I get that Napa wine should be from Napa wine, but what I am saying is that in this particular instance where Champagne is quite literally the catch-all equivalent of “Kleenex,” “Jello,” or “Google” (whereas Napa isn’t the catch-all for Cabernet, for example) the notion that they continue to spend pr and marketing effort on trade protection in a period of rapid decline indicates that they are so far removed from the vagaries of consumer wants and needs as to be rendered impotent.

Does the CIVC want to get the train back on the tracks; do they want to avert continued declines of 20% over the next three year period?  If so, they need to focus on Champagne being the original, focus on thought-leadership with the innumerable sparkling wines from around the world that use the classic méthode champenoise technique created and perfected in France, build up the lore and history, focus on Champagne being an accompaniment to everyday celebrations and ease off of the vigilance—ease up on the consumer watchdog aspect of their marketing that “warns” me of being “tricked.”  They need to do so before their bubbles go flat pounded by a $13 Spanish Cava that tastes good, which is about all most consumers care about anyway.